Dumbing it down for the movie-going audience. They might not have understood the subtle allusions to Hitler without the guy having a name that kind of sounded the same. 
A couple more title examples:
The first film version of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I guess they thought it sounded more whimsical or something.
Stephen King’s short story Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption was just The Shawshank Redemption on screen. Nobody still knew who Rita Hayworth was is 1994, I guess?
I think it was more that
putting Rita Hayworth in the name of the movie would have drawn some extra attention to the poster, which was supposed to be a major reveal at the end. Of course, I haven’t read the short story, so I don’t know how that might have figured there.
Rita Hayworth was clearly identified in the film. I think they just thought that the shortened version sounded a whole lot better- which it does. Rita Hayworth & the Shawshank Redemption sounds like a neighborhood jam band or something.
Oh, absolutely. The first time I read it, halfway through the book when we finally learn what the Sorcerer’s Stone is, I literally blurted out loud “Well why didn’t they call it the Philosopher’s Stone to begin with!?” It doesn’t even make sense: Sure, a lot of Americans don’t know what the Philosopher’s Stone is, but nobody knows what the Sorcerer’s Stone is.
Sure we do, it’s that stone the boy in the Disney film pulls the sword out of… or was that Mickey with the buckets doing the work?
OK, ShibbOleth, I just have to know how you copied and pasted that quote to mangle it the way you did. How did the ‘out loud "Wel’ sneak in there?
I felt that way too. There must be a lot of children who wouldn’t recognize the term “Philosopher’s Stone” (although it would likely be familiar to many fantasy readers), but NO ONE would recognize the term “Sorcerer’s Stone”. If given the choice between two terms that are going to be meaningless to many children anyway, why not go with the one that they could at least look up in the dictionary or encyclopedia if they wanted to?
It does amuse me to think about substituting the word “sorcerer” for “philosophy” in other contexts, though. 
I fondly remember my favorite Sorcery professor in college…
Continuing the sort-of hijack on movie titles, I liked how the book Rocket Boys was made into a movie called October Sky, an anagram of the original title. I don’t know if it was deliberate though.
Yes, the title change to October Sky was deliberate – they didn’t want it to sound like a science fiction movie.
No, I meant I wondered whether they were consciously making an anagram or it was a coincidence.
Continuing with the book-to-movie title change, Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Cafe became simply, Fried Green Tomatoes.
Doesn’t seem particularly likely, since the ‘mi’ and ‘mar’ would be rendered as ‘mai’ and ‘maa’/‘maru’ respectively. Only one character difference, but none of the characters are likely to be confused for each other, in the process of transliteration. (i イ a ア ru ル)
Michael could only become Markl through deliberate change or a consistent transcription error (unless he was only named once in the entire thing, in which case a single transcription error could do it) - the latter seems far less likely than the former.
Looking it up, Markl is also younger than Michael, so it’s entirely possible they’re not meant as the same character at all, but simply play the same role.
It would be an unbelievable coincidence if it just happened to work out to be a perfect anagram.
Besides, a friend of mine interviewed Hickham, and he acknowledged that they made it an anagram on purpose.
Which is ironic because when I see that title I immediately think of Vanilla Sky, (which, in another layer of irony, sounds more like a science fiction title than the original “Open Your Eyes.”)
In the book versions of Dune, Paul Atreides had three names. Paul Atreides, Muad’dib, and Usul. I beleive Usul was somehow his “true” spiritual name, or something like that, and Muad’dib was simlpy a title. In the Sci-Fi channel version, they skip Usul altogether. My brain starts to short-circuit every time I think about the Lynch version, so I can’t remember if they included it there or not.
Very definitely. They have multiple runnings of Sean Young as Chani saying the line Tell me of your Home World, Usual, which is signidficant in the book.
Q: “What do they call the original Star Trek in China?”
A: “Mr. Sulu, Master Navigator”
FWIW,
I’d heard that this was kind of “product placement” driven. The Willie Wonka name had been licensed to a candy company as a symbiotic tie-in to the first film, and the title change was intended to enhance the value of that name by making it more prominant.